I haven’t attended the State Fair of Texas in a decade or more, and I don’t intend to anytime soon. I don’t like crowds with guns and am afraid of getting caught in a gang crossfire. Eating a Fletchers Corn Dog ain’t worth the risk.
One highlight of my visit when I was young, besides watching the hoochi-cootchi dancers and seeing Bonnie and Clyde’s death car, was listening to Big Tex, the 55-foot-tall talking cowboy, say, “Howdy folks, welcome to the State Fair of Texas.” For decades, he wore Dickies western clothes, size “G” for giant, though now he wears Cavender’s western wear, and a Resistol Hat completes his wardrobe.
The picture above isn’t Big Tex; it is puny-assed James Talarico on his state fair day, thinking he’ll soon be the new Big Tex in town. In Fort Worth, I see a lot of young women and their mothers dressed like that: blue-jean too-short shorts or skirts, boots, halter tops, and hats; it’s a Texas thing: watch Taylor Sheridens “Land Man,” filmed in Fort Worth, and you’ll see. He’s not married, no girlfriend, no kids, no dog, nothing, and he drives a tiny electric Prius, except in his TV commercials, where he drives a rented pickup truck and wears jeans and boots, so he was likely alone or with someone on his staff, or worse. He would be a big hit in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas.
He is a confused Democrat running for the Texas Senate against Ken Paxton, who ain’t no angel either, and claims to be a New Age Christian, a New Age Pastor, a New Age man of God, plus a hero to working-class Texans. He throws around lofty claims, but not all of them hold up. He believes there are six genders, God is non-binary, and Christianity has got it all wrong; his way is better than God, Jesus, and the Bible. His way must be one hell of a book.
He was an educator for a time, then served in the Texas House, and then attended Divinity School and Harvard. He also graduated from the University of Texas in Austin, which says a lot about this weirdo and how the school and the city indoctrinated him. Even Wavy Gravy, the old hippy of Woodstock fame, said in an interview that Austin, its hipsters, and its old hippies, who came there in the 60s and never left, were too much for him, and that he and his Hog Farm group fed the folks at Woodstock and gobbled up all the brown acid Arlo Guthrie said to stay away from. I’m with Wavy on this one.
Most of us Texans don’t consider Austin, and its inhabitants, part of our state; Houston and Dallas come right behind it. I lived 30 or so miles north of Austin in Georgetown for three years, but the city had the good sense to erect a 10-foot electrified fence around it to keep out the Austinite Artistic Radicalized Whole Food fed Zombies; now they have made their way to one of my favorite places, Marfa, way out in the Chihuahuan Desert in far West Texas, and the folks out there make sure they don’t stay more than a few months: they have their ways to oust them, but keep it a secret. The fellow at the front desk of the Hotel Piasano wanted to tell me, but was skittish about it. I’ll find out from my buddy Sagebrush Sonny on my next trip to Planet Marfa, my favorite bar, if he’s still alive. The last time I saw him, those damn nucleurized, mean-as-hell Chihuahuas that inhabit the desert chewed off his good arm, and now he’s down to one good leg, a wooden leg, a gimp arm, and uses a straw to sip his beer. He needs to stay out of the desert. But no, he had to help that poor, misguided, dysfunctional family from Lake Minitonka, Minnesota, set up camp in the desert. I wrote about the incident in an earlier story.
I would love to see this Talarico cat debate my Pastor at church about the Bible and the Word, and try to explain the six genders and the non-binary God and all the LXJBQ crap he believes in. It would be as fun as a WWF cage fight against a confused Demon.
In my last post about “The Texan Heads to South Dakota,” I mentioned riding an ATV with the cowboys and cowgirls and the ill-tempered Bison; well, that didn’t happen: I blame that grandiose idea on my meds or age; both came into play, and Momo brought me back to reality. She’s a retired nurse, so she knows things we common folk don’t.
Momo and I don’t travel much outside of Texas, but this year we decided to take the trip to South Dakota to see the famous Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument, and the annual Bison Roundup at Custer State Park. We don’t have much time left in our hourglass, so we figured this would be our longest adventure.
We are senior citizens, old people, to be exact, and didn’t realize we couldn’t have hours in one day and about the same the next. In our foggyds, we are still in our 50s and as robust as Jack LaLanne, who lived to be 97, and went through half a dozen Happy, the white German Shepherd co-host on his workout show. My late 1950s-oriented mother used to stand in front of the black-and-white television, working out with him while smoking a Winston cigarette and sipping black coffee. She worked out well between coughing fits. I neither smoke nor work out, so I might live a bit longer.
We stayed the night in Wichita, Kansas, at a great hotel on the university campus. As we drove through the Kansas farmlands, the famous song “Wichita Lineman” stuck in my head for a few hours. Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell made a musical dream team. If only Glen had married Bobbi Gentry, his life would have been different. I swear that woman had the longest legs and the best head of hair in country music, and that’s before she ever sang a note. Glen had her as a guest on his Goodtime Hour show back in the late sixties and asked her how long it took to shave those legs, right before they sang a duet. She said it took a couple of hours and two stiff cocktails. Look it up; it’s on YouTube, just like everything else that ever happened.
From Wichita, we drove to North Platte, Nebraska: not much of a city, populated by people who don’t know how to coordinate their clothing or wash their vehicles, with all the men, and a few women, wearing their gimme caps backward, and Walmart is the main retailer in town. We stayed one night at a hotel there, then moved on to Keystone, South Dakota, home to Mount Rushmore, deep in the Black Hills of the Dakotas. A three-day trip that should have taken two, but our old bodies and weary traveling souls couldn’t keep up. I will give a shout-out to how much I despise using Google and Apple Maps on my iPhone. I would have done better with a folded paper map. Please, Elon, start a map service that actually works and doesn’t give you a mental breakdown.
When we got to our hotel, I realized that somewhere along the journey, my car key fob had fallen out of my pocket, probably while I was filling up our pickup with $4.99-a-gallon gas. We searched the pickup, the room, the suitcases, other people’s rooms, the parking lot, and the woods, but found nothing. Honda said we should take the car to a locksmith to change the vehicle code so the lost key fob wouldn’t work. We drove to Rapid City in the rain and fog, barely able to see the mountain roads. We got it done, got back to the hotel, and drove to our room in Keystone, $175.00 poorer. Then the day we leave for home, Momo finds my keys in the pocket of one of her thirty jackets and sweaters she keeps in the backseat of our truck. She is permanently freezing to death, even in 100-degree weather. Now we are down to one set of keys for the pickup, and we are both slipping into phase one of the derangement category. If nothing else, this trip gave us a grand showtime presentation of what old folks shouldn’t be doing.
But it ain’t over yet, dear hearts. While backing out of the handicap parking space at the 1880 steam locomotive train ride through the Black Hills from Keystone to Hill City, I backed into an illegally parked car behind us, which gave us no room to back out. So we left a note on the car’s windshield, as we do in Texas with the number and such, and finally, through the Keystone police deputy, tracked the owner down in Rapid City. She has a detached retina and shouldn’t be driving anything but a walker; her car had numerous damages from previous collisions, or had been purchased at a demolition derby, and she was parked in a narrow drive that was marked “No Parking.” A concerned elderly person called the cops on us: Bless their little heart. The deputy was very understanding, noting it wasn’t in a parking-lot-marked space, and said Barny Fife—was his hero. Now Flo and her gang have to fix her car and our pickup. What the hell can go wrong next? Car damage, lost keys, nothing left but a medical emergency. This was part of the preview I mentioned earlier.
Mount Rushmore is a wonder to behold. One of the most amazing things we had witnessed. Old George, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Honest Abe, their faces carved into a granite mountain.
We met folks from all over our country and Europe. The folks in Europe like to come here for some odd reason, and Americans like to go there. Doesn’t make sense to me. My sister, a world traveler, hasn’t visited much of the US, except Seattle, San Francisco, the Gulf, and Oklahoma, and thinks you have to go overseas for a proper vacation. I told her she should move to Europe, but instead, she sold her home in Plano to a Muslim family with numerous wives and a passel of kids, and now lives in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, near her daughter and grandson. She says her old home is now a temporary neighborhood Mosque and “Learing Centre.”
I guess I’m just a Texas bumpkin with no taste in my mouth. I don’t give one silver dime about visiting Europe: they all drive on the wrong side of the road, the language is a hindrance, and the food is questionable at best. Give me a Whataburger Junior meal No. 1, with fries and a drink; now that’s fine dining. We did stumble upon a wonderful restaurant in Keystone, The Powderhouse Lodge. Best darn food I’ve had anywhere, except for Momo’s steaks. The hostess, an older lady named Sherrye, was a wonderful old soul, and it was obvious she ran the place like a drill sergeant with a velvet-covered baton.
The Chief Crazy Horse mountain carving monument blew us away. It was better than Mount Rushmore and twice its size. The Lakota Indian Nation is financing it through donations and philanthropy; Jean Kroc, the widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, is their main source of funding. Our tour guide was Lakota, and I, being part Cherokee, we hit it off. We made secret Indian brotherhood handshakes and whispered promises to take back the country one day. He told me he has a well-supplied secret band of Lakota warriors with Jeeps and big-assed pickups ready to go when the time is right. I gave him my email and phone number.
The high point of the trip, which is the proper name for traveling retired folks. Vacations are for those still working and getting a week or two off each year; the world-famous Bison Roundup in Custer National Park was the high point.
Custer National Park, named after the famous idiot Cavalry General, sits in the middle of the Dakota Black Hills and has about 1,500 to 2,000 Bison roaming around, doing as they please. At around 2,500 pounds, they own the place. It’s a beautiful part of America that everyone should see before we pass on. George Armstrong Custer might have had prestige, a nice mustache, goatee, and long, flowing hair, but the American Indians kicked his butt. Looks and stupidity buy you only so much time; ask any of those fools in Hollywood.
Texas also has herds of Bison. We can thank the famous cattle rancher Charles Goodnight and his hardy frontier Texas wife, Molly, for saving a handful of orphaned Bison calves, raising them, and establishing a large herd of the last of the Plains Bison in Texas. The large, surviving historical herd now lives in Caprock Canyon, near Goodnight Ranch, a Texas state memorial site.
Waking at 4 AM and heading to the park in the dark, we missed our GPS-guided turn and ended up on a dirt road that led us to a paved park road with the other 20,000-plus folks. We waited in a car line for over two hours and eventually reached one of the viewing areas along the steep hills surrounding the corrals where the bison are kept for vet checkups, branding, and a few auctions for ranchers and other state parks hoping to start their own herds.
Armed with our folding chairs and dressed in our best Bison-viewing attire — Stetson hat, western boots, and Wrangler jeans — pure Texan. We made our way across the hill and found a spot that wasn’t flat but was sturdy enough to keep us from rolling down the hill’s steep, rocky slope. We were at the south viewing area where the corrals are located, and I understand there were just as many folks at the North area of the park where the Bison had been gathered a few days before.
Cowboys and Cowgirls from all over the country are picked from thousands of applications to wrangle and drive the Bison. They are not paid a dime and do it for the love of country and our western heritage, and of course they get to herd the largest and meanest beast alive. No wonder the Indians had such a hard time with them. Bison aren’t cattle, not even as docile as a Longhorn, and they have a permanent mean streak, likely because Indians with arrows chased them around the prairies, and then white moronic hunters shot them for sport and their hides: it’s an inherited generational thing. You get too close to one, and you are done for: flipped in the air, stomped into the prairie grass, and sent home in a body bag. They ain’t pets in corrals at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show. That’s the reason I decided not to take part in the roundup. A 2,500-pound bison is no match for a puny ATV driven by an old idiot.
Long before we could see the herd crest the hills, we could feel the vibration of their hooves pounding the South Dakota prairie through the ground and into our boots. We could see dust rising a few miles away. Thousands of people from every state in our union and Europe stood up, readied their cameras or phones, and prepared for one of the most majestic spectacles in our country.
The sun shone brightly, the sky was deep blue with thin, wispy clouds, and in the distance, over a few large hills on the prairie, we saw the herd emerge, not stampeding, but walking leisurely, with 60 wranglers on horseback keeping them together. A few tried to escape, but the wranglers chased them down and back to the herd. It was a breathtaking sight. Pure American western heritage. People cheered, clapped, wept, and celebrated as the historical herd of American beasts moved on the prairie to their temporary corrals. The spirit of America was alive and on full display that morning. People from every state in our country and Europe came together to witness the 8th wonder of the world. Momo and I will never forget that day.
How much worse can it get? AOC, the little girl from the fake hood who was a bartender and the Islamist Mayor of New York, yucking it up at the 911 Memorial as the names of the dead were being read by relatives of the deceased. An avowed socialist, a sitting member of our Congress, and an avowed Islamist, socialist, communist, Jew hating, Christian-hating, American-hating, terrorist sympathizer demon serving as the mayor of America’s greatest city. It used to be; now it’s but a shell of itself. My heart goes out to the good people of New York who wished for none of this.
The young, hip, elite, overeducated, self-absorbed, narcissistic, worthless POS elected these two. American Jews voted for them; our young and privileged voted for them. Has their new BMW been delivered yet? How about those free grocery stores in every neighborhood? Wall Street is fleeing for its life, headed to Dallas, Texas, as fast as they can find a building.
Has our American Jewish community forgotten what happened to their families and relatives in Europe in the late 1930s through 1945, and in Israel on October 7th, 2023, when women, men, and children were murdered in the worst ways imaginable? And that smiling bastard approved of it all and would gladly pull the lever for it to happen again. What the hell has happened to the United States of America? I feel horrible for the good people in New York, but the rest of you deserve what you voted for, and it won’t be good. How dare that piece of Rat Shit show up and dishonor and celebrate what his peers did to our American citizens twenty-five years ago and are still doing today? I am disgusted.
We all remember the cartoons, or perhaps the real person dressed in a robe, carrying the sign that read “Repent: The End Is Near.” I’m not that guy, but for the last 70 years or so, he and others like him have been saying it, and they might be right. It’s closer now than ever.
Crazy old man,” that’s what my grandfather called him, walking in front of Leonard Brothers Department Store in downtown Fort Worth around Christmas time, wearing out the concrete sidewalk. He was dressed as a person in Biblical times: robe, sandals, long hair, beard, and the sign was painted on a distressed piece of plywood that had seen many years of weather. He carried it with conviction, not caring what other shoppers thought of his look or his presence of lunacy. I was a kid, maybe six or seven at best, and I sensed that this crazy old guy knew something I didn’t. Grandfather didn’t pay him much mind; we continued on into the store to buy whatever he was purchasing that day. I was along for the bus ride and the walk.
Our preacher at Poly Baptist Church used that term often: usually during or right before the ushers passed the plate around for donations; we call it tithing today. I would reluctantly put my treasured nickel in the plate, wanting to keep it because it would help me buy something I assumed I needed. Kids didn’t have actual money in the 1950s, only what they could scrounge up, find on the sidewalk, or get from their parents. I was a hard-broke kid, selling pop bottles to support my habit of Dr Pepper soft drinks and Zero Candy Bars. Our Preacher knew all the phrases and when to use them to gain the most cash from our congregation. The all-old-lady choir would sing some hymn; a few would faint, and that always brought in more change. ” Oh my, she might have to go to the hospital, where the whispers of the other big-haired old gals.” That was the drill.
Now here we are, seventy years later, and nothing has changed. We are still saying “Repent: The End Is Near,” and it is closer than we think. What moron on this planet would think that Iran, once called Persia for centuries, was a vibrant country with good values and a modern society, would be the one to take out the entire Western civilization? What person with a functioning mind would think that these zealots don’t have a few or more dirty bombs stashed away for a rainy day? Although it never rains in Iran, that’s why they don’t farm; it’s a damn desert with 12th-century idiots running around in robes and rags on their heads, killing anyone who doesn’t bow to their ideology. Try and pull that crap off in Texas and hide and watch what happens.
The point I am trying to make is: yes, the end is near, and Iran is desperate, and they all want to go to hang out with Allah and do whatever they do to 72 virgins, so they don’t think about the other side of the coin. Satan is awaiting their arrival and planning some new stuff just for them.
Those virgins will be long-deceased nuns, on loan from Heaven just for chuckles, with shotguns and rifles, and a never-ending supply of ammo, and they know how to use those weapons. So forget the fornication and cooking me dinner part. Abdul will be eating a Satanic form of Weight Watchers microwave dinners that are all pork: stuff that even Oprah wouldn’t touch.
Don’t mess with Israel, and also, don’t mess with Texas; we are kinda the same temperament. If the Mullah does send a dirty little bomb he purchased from some Chinese guy out of the trunk of a Toyota, Israel will likely shoot it down, then return it to them in another form.
The crazy old guy on the street carrying the sign ain’t so crazy anymore. Right?
I’m old enough to remember the drought in Texas during the 1950s; it cost my grandfather and every farmer in his township their crops until a small shower dumped almost 8 inches of rain one night. The town of Santa Anna, Texas, had prayed for a miracle, and it came. Just enough to save some of the crops, but many had already lost their farms to the banks, sold their cattle, and given up, moving to Fort Worth to work menial jobs.
My Grandfather was too much of an old hard-ass to do that. He figured Johnson grass was good for something, so he cut it and sold it for hay, at a discount to his friends. Cotton, grain, corn, maize, nothing would grow. No rain, no plants. It wasn’t the 1930s, but it was too close, and they survived those years as well.
Days of playing on the farm, 100-degree-plus temperatures, it was so hot the Rattlesnakes wouldn’t come out, or for us to shoot them with our BB Guns. The chickens weren’t laying, Granny wasn’t making money on eggs, and my grandfather, Papa, had crops that shriveled away like a neglected plant on a hot windowsill. The cows were constantly thirsty, which kept the windmill pumping the well full-time whenever there was a breeze. The stock tanks were dry and cracked; there wasn’t even enough mud for a crawdad to survive.
The farmhouse had no air conditioning; no one had that in those times. It was windows open, pray for a breeze to dampen the sheets at night, and hope to wake up the next morning without the Mountain Boomers stealing you from your sweat-soaked bed. It was a slice of hell on earth, but my cousins and I were young kids, and it didn’t affect us the same as it did our families. I didn’t notice the worry and desperation in my grandparents’ eyes as they went about their chores. I happily shot chickens and snakes with my BB Gun. Children are often clueless about adult misery.
To me, my grandparents were old. They were in their early sixties at that time, so that was ancient. They both looked twenty years older than their actual age: wrinkled, sun-baked, and worked to the bone. A hard life produces a hard exterior
I was six, on the forefront of my life’s journey. A city boy raised by a country mother and city father, playing country kid in the summer. It wasn’t Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, but it came close. They both worked from daylight to dark hoeing weeds, trying to keep what they could alive, suffered monetary problems that would drive a man to drink, and would count change to buy food at the small local grocery store that was less than any convenience store we have today. Whatever food they could grow was immediately canned for the winter or eaten that day. Those good old days, the 1950s, weren’t all that good, looking back now. At the edge of Seventy-Seven years old, I’ve outlived my grandfather by more than a decade. But he thought he was healthy until he wasn’t. Years of cooking everything in lard and saved Bacon grease took its toll on his system, and he died young from a long list of medical issues. Clogged this, hardened that, bad heart, diabetes, you name it, he had it. I personally thought it was all the chicken. All of their children were on their own with families, so no one wanted the farm. Granny sold it for a pittance, moved into a small public housing unit in town, and finished out her life there. The days of the farm and the misery of the drought years of the 1950s are all behind us now.
This relentless heat and drought in Texas give me pause to remember my childhood summers. I’m old now and remember the good times, but this heat and drought bring it all home. The good old days.
When I was ten, the world of writing came to me. I had been reading for years, thanks to my persistent Aunt Norma, my father’s older sister, who got her hands on some Fun With Dick And Jane books. Dick and Jane soon took the back seat to Mickey Spillane, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck. I was more than smug, quite the little dandy, reading at five years old, while my neighborhood gang of idiots couldn’t spell their name.
Around that time, my mentor, Mr. Cohen, a master gardener, the man who passed on his love of horticulture to a young boy, lost his wife to cancer, then my grandfather, the tough old World War 1 vet, caught a case of it and was wasting away before my eyes. I didn’t know what devastation meant, but it had grabbed me by the collar and shook me good.
Before my grandfather left for the hospital for the last time, he spent a few hours alone with me in his sickroom. Still able to speak and make sense. He told me of his experiences in the war, the trenches in France, the gas attacks, the men he killed in hand-to-hand combat, and the ones he killed from afar with a bullet that had no consciousness. I listened intently, absorbing every detail. War was not like it was presented on television or in the movies; it was raw, cruel, unforgiving, and mentally destroyed many men, including him. He knew it was his last roundup and accepted it with dignity. I didn’t.
The mind of a ten-year-old is wired backward from that of an adult. So, without thinking of what I asked, I said,
“Grandad, when you get to Heaven, what will you do. Are there jobs there? Will you have friends?”
He thought for a while, then answered,
” There might be work, something to keep us busy, but the main thing I want to do is apologize and ask forgiveness for the young Germans I killed in the war. I didn’t want to kill them, but it was my job, and it was theirs to do the same to me. That’s if I get to Heaven, which is a mystery to me, cause I have done some bad things in life, asked for forgiveness, but who knows how much the good Lord is willing to forgive.”
I partially understood: I was a Baptist, but a fearful one, not one of faith, but feared the outcome if I didn’t toe the line. He passed a week later, lying in a bed, reliving the hell of war that he carried till the end.
Not long after that, I was at my other grandparents’ farm in Santa Anna, Texas. My grandfather, a nice man but not particularly fond of the other cousins or me, was working on his tractor and stopped for a rest. I was nearby and sat beside him. He was aloof from us children, seeing us as farmhands, not children to be nurtured or molded, but only as labor, expected to keep our mouths shut and our eyes downcast. He made me nervous; I feared him in a way I shouldn’t have. I did mention that the brain of a ten-year-old is wired backward, so that being said, this is what I asked.
” Grandpa, when you get to Heaven, will you still have to work on the farm?” I said.
He looked at me like there was a third eye in my forehead.
” He sat for a moment and then said,
” The good book says many times that everyone has to work. If you don’t have a trade or labor for your fruits, you don’t eat, you don’t survive, and your family suffers and perishes. God is forgiving, but I think he has a limit to that forgiveness. I expect to be a farmer in Heaven, just as I am here on this God-awful piece of land, and I will do what is required of me. The Angels can’t do everything. I’ve repented for my wagon load of sin, and I think the good Lord has forgiven me, but I won’t know until I get there.” This was a few years after the small miracle that had saved his crops and brought him back to church. He was a different man religiously, but still didn’t have much use for children. He passed away a year later from Diabetes and other illnesses related to my grandmother cooking everything in bacon grease for fifty years.
Two different men, ones that I admired, two individuals that molded me, had given me advice that is with me to this day. We all must repent our sins, ask forgiveness, live with our shortcomings, and we all must work for a living, eke out what we can: dig a ditch, plant a seed, pick cotton, do what we must to survive and give our family and ourselves sustenance and a roof over our head. All these years later, those two bits of advice still make me what I am.
Here in Texas, we have a pickup truck full of local sayings and down-home descriptions, and one of our favorites that covers most of our female-induced situations is called ” A Hot Mess.” Sounds sort of like a hormonal-induced biography of Marilyn Monroe’s or Elizabeth Taylor’s life. What it really means is everything is “FUBAR,” another good one that came out of WWII. My father wouldn’t tell me the real meaning until I was a teenager. F…. Up Beyond Any Repair, you get the drift. All of us kids used it, because all of our fathers served in WWII. We heard it daily.
I can clearly hear those angelic acidic voices of my mother and grandmother talking about an unruly cousin (usually Cookie) or an aunt or uncle, or a neighbor being a “hot mess,” or a situation that is out of their control, which was usually me.
I wasn’t a bad kid; like Sinatra, I did things my way and paid for it in the usual way: a Tupperware, 9″ x 12″ hard plastic cake storage container to the butt. I still have a faint Tupperware emblem scar embedded in my left buttock, a free lifelong birthmark compliments of my sainted mother with the arm strength of an NBL pitcher. Then, to make matters worse, she put my birthday cake in the same container, and I had to suffer the humility of blowing out those candles of that lovely cake sitting atop that cruel instrument of punishment. Dr. Johnson, my pediatric MD, would always ask me about that scar when giving me my monthly penicillin shot in the butt for whatever ailed me. It was a fairly new drug back then, so you got a shot for everything. He would say, “Well, at least she made you a cake.” He was an old Army doctor and smoked unfiltered Camels while he examined me. I think he died young while mowing his lawn.
If I’m seeing things right, this country is in a “hot mess.” We got ragheads with missles and exploding drones blowing up large oil filled ships sitting in bean bag chairs working their Gameboy controllers, I-ugh-atolla’s killing all the young folks that want a normal life, crazy ass socialist trying to take over our governement, and are succeeding, a smiling sleezy-assed commie mayor of New York trying to turn one of our greatest cities into a third-world shithole, a million Somali’s ripping off us taxpayers and driving around in Lamborginis and Porsches, Lake Wobegon has gone to hell, and all the strong women and good looking men and above average children have left and moved to Texas and Florida, even old Garrison split for New York and is now trying to escape from Madison Ave to somewhrere where he can go for a walk without hearing a call to prayer five times a day on a sound system bigger than Lynard Skynner’s. I’m telling you folks, we are in a “Hot Mess.” One thing about Texas is, we all have guns, ammo, lots of coldbeer and pork rinds, HEB frozen pizzas, and we are pissed off most of the time because it’s so hot, so the “Hot Mess” the rest of the world is in doesn’t faze us that much. Governor Abbott already issued hunting tags for all the terrorists we want to shoot; limits don’t apply, and the taxidermy mounting fee is fifty percent off.
Don’t get me wrong, we still have a “hot mess” down here, but ours isn’t as bad as it is where you are. So, if it gets unbearable in your hometown, come on down to Texas; we’ll watch out for ya.
This picture is only partially AI-generated. Me, the hair, the hat, the background, and the Mandolin are real; the suit is taken from Porter Waggoner. I hate AI.
Being a native Texan is a damn challenge, and not every one of us can pull it off without a series of small nervous breakdowns, panic attacks, and, of course, a few bottles of coldbeer (it’s considered a form of cultural blasphemy to pronounce it as two words in Texas). So, we tend to meld our words into one; it makes it easier to speak without sounding like a high roller walking around in high cotton. We do have our own language down here in the Lone Star State.
I consider writing my job now, perhaps my trade. So far, I’ve not made a nickel for any of my literature, possibly because it’s about Texas, my childhood, country music, and all the characters I’ve met along my journey on the lone prairie. There is a book of short stories in the works, but an addled mind has a problem picking out twenty of the four hundred I’ve written over the decades.
Gardening was a passion for a while; I became a master gardener and imagined my landscape to equal George Harrison’s Friar Park or Martha Stewart’s backyard. It’s too hot in this part of Texas to keep anything alive, so all of my plants are expiring, begging for me to put them out of their misery. I had a small service for two purple Salvias this morning, and last night, I saw another Rat at our bird feeder. Momo would cook for the little Avians every morning if I didn’t stop her.
Music would be my other pursuit of happiness. Still, I mostley play with our church band, which is primaraly worship songs: ain’t no Amie, The Weight, or Like A Rolling Stone getting played in the sanctuarary, even though we have the intrumentation to pull it off, and some of the musicians actually can play that type of music, mostley myself since I am the oldest old codger on stage and the rest of the bunch is in their 40s, and that leaves me as the “old relic from another era, the Woodstock generation, that played Hendrix and The Band, and tried to change the world, but failed miserably and had to go back home with our collective tails between our legs. Our parents laughed, “See, you stupid ass, we told you so.” They were half-right.
My main interest now is Mandolin: bluegrass, jazz, country, the music played by Ricky Skaggs, Sierra Hull, Mike Marshall, Sam Bush, Molly Tuttle, and Billy Strings, and of course Bill Monroe.
When I was a wee child, maybe five, my father brought home a tater-bug mandolin, likely given to him by a musician friend. I learned four or five two-finger chords, and then grew bored with the instrument: Cartoons were more interesting. My father was a professional country fiddle player, so he should have whooped my butt and made me stick with it, but my mother intervened. One musician in the home was more than enough. Now, that I’m older and bored with the guitar I’ve been playing since the age of twelve, I’ve gone back to the Mandolin and fiddle. I’m much too far down that rabbit hole to stop, and Momo, my wife, says it’s the only thing, except a trunk full of medications, keeping me alive: she is always right. If I stopped playing, within twenty-four hours I would assume room temperature and the paramedics would have to bag me and haul me away. So, I keep playing and writing. It’s a vicious circle, one that I created for myself. There is no escape, and I can’t take it with me when I go, and neither can any of you reading this. Everything stays here except your new suit and no shoes.
We are taking a road trip to Mount Rushmore in September, and I hope that seeing those big faces, Custer’s Last Stand, and maybe Yellowstone will revive us and add a few more years on our punch card. I plan to watch Not by Northwest before we go, so I can see how I could climb on Teddy Roosevelt’s nose and not fall off. I also have plans to run with the Bison, which is the newest form of self-destructive dopamine hits that old folks do these days. I’ve always wanted to pet a Buffalo, or a wolf, so this will be my chance.
I’m no travel writer or influencer, so don’t expect anything spectacular or even interesting when we return. I may do a Podcast full of rants, but that would be it. God Bless the Alamo and Texas.
If Frank were still around, he would be giving his mafia buddies a call to do something about this grinning commie Rat-bastard who got himself elected mayor by the young nepo-elitist children of the rich democrats. Frank was a Dem, but from a different era, when it meant love of country and, of course, JFK, Jackie, Marilyn, and Ava. I read today that the old handsy storyteller from Minnesota, Garrison Keillor, is pissed that his taxes on his multi-million dollar townhouse are going to be doubled, so he is going back to his cozy little Lake Wobegon, that mythical magical place where all the women are strong, the men good-looking, and the children above average. Sounds like a tidy place to reside.
Give New York City a year, and all the party girls will be covered in Burkas, the single Beta-sexual men will be dating goats, and the Build A Bear stores will be converted to “Build A Bomb” stores for all the newly indoctrinated child terrorists. Sounds like we need Supergirl, Superman, Super Dog, Cat Woman, Soupy Sales, the Fantastic Four, and maybe Batman to fly into Laguardia. My son and his family briefly visited there on their way to Niagara Falls, and he thinks his DNA may have been damaged.
So this is what our nation has come down to: Socialists, communists, foreigners, and non-citizens calling the shots, and we sit back and do nothing while they steal our country and tax money from us. If you are a Democrat and read my blog, I’m calling you out. It’s nothing personal, only the way 88 million more Americans and I feel.
Let me rub some more Gulf of America sea salt into our gaping national wound: guess what! Hollywood is as dead as a Rat that just ate a piece of yummy bait inside the guts of my hot tub. Fort Worth, Cowtown, home of the shit-kicking, rodeo-riding, pickup-driving, cowboy-boot-wearing country music playing and listening boys and girls, is now the new Hollywood, thanks to a real cowboy-turned-producer, Taylor Sheridan. The girls here in Fort Worth don’t need Ozempic; they look quite nice in their Wrangler jeans and Justin boots, and they live off of Mexican food, Whataburgers, and Shiner Bock.
It would be nice if old Blue Eyes could come back for one more concert at Madison Square Garden, now that Taylor Swift is a has-been and Ella Langley, a true country artist, has outsold Mariah Cary and the long-gone Whitney Houston for fourteen straight weeks with “Choosing Texas.” Yeah, take that LA music machine.
None of this is political; it’s just how I feel most of the time. Hold my beer and watch this, hide and watch, and get off of my lawn.
The year was 1955, and at six years old, by my grandmother’s observation, I was a heathen child, almost feral. Being raised in the big city of Fort Worth on a steady diet of television featuring Popeye, Bugs Bunny, and the Three Stooges, I was living in a religious void. I saw the “good book” as a large decoration on the dining room table and read it at Christmas, Easter, and family funerals. Recently, I had been attending a few services at the Poly First Baptist Church with my parents. Still, the preacher, with his over-animated, stage-stomping Hell-and-Damnation rants, scared me more than The Mummy and Frankenstein combined. I was wishing for a fatal disease to strike so I would be bedridden and couldn’t attend.
I had been visiting the farm for six weeks, from June into July, and it was my first time away from my parents. The farmhouse had no television, only a radio. By the third day of no cartoons, I had the shakes and a low-grade fever. I did bring my Red Ryder BB gun and enough ammo for a summer’s worth of popping some of my grandmother’s five hundred chickens: the BBs bounced off their thick feathers, so none were harmed. Other than throwing dirt clods at Rattle Snakes, it was all the entertainment I could muster. Granny was a wise Cherokee, medical Shaman, and self-proclaimed Texas Biblical scholar, and she felt a week at the Baptist Church Vacation Bible School would fix me up and assure my acceptance into Heaven. I had no idea where Heaven was or when I would be required to visit, so I trusted my Granny would make my reservations.
Miss Ida Belle Mae and her younger sister, Rita Rose Mae, are the self-appointed teachers of our Bible school class of 25 children, ages 6 to 10. Homely as a sack of poultry feed, the two are old maids and prolific spinsters rumored to survive on a tidy income from a single pumping oil well on their farm. It has been a long-standing gambling bet at the Domino Parlor that that gasping little well will give it up. To date, no one has won the wager. When the holidays come around, the two sisters are rumored to donate a substantial sum to the church. To appease the ladies and keep the money flowing, the kind but timid preacher is forced to let them do what they please. Their pleasure this summer will be teaching Bible school. The preacher will regret this decision.
On the first day of Bible School, our class cut, pasted, and signed 270 prayer cards for the sick and unfortunate children in Africa; quite a feat for 25 kids. Most of us were injured and bleeding from paper cuts and glue poisoning from licking the envelopes. My tongue swelled up the size of a buttery biscuit. The kid beside me glued his lips shut, and Miss Ida had to pry them open with a spoon and a douse of grape Kool-Aid.
Miss Ida sent us outside to lounge under the trees and recover from our stint on her assembly line. There is no recovery; it’s 96 degrees and not a rustle of a breeze, but it’s better than forced child labor.
A black Cadillac sedan stops in front of the church, and an older lady escorts a boy of maybe nine or ten into the main building. The kid wears a black suit, white shirt, and red bow tie. We assume he is here for a funeral or a baptism, but don’t care because it’s too hot to move or think. Miss Ida rings the lunch bell. Yummy peanut butter, grape jelly sandwiches, and lukewarm Kool-Aid await—the usual menu for Bible school attendees. After we are seated, Miss Ida brings the suited boy to the front of the class. She is beaming like a schoolgirl attending her first prom In a giddy voice, she addresses us,
” Children, I would like to introduce Master Stewart Sweet. His daddy is the famous tent-preaching evangelist and faith healer from San Angelo, the Right and Honorable Doctor I.M. Sweet. Master Stewart will attend our Bible school and lead the children’s Bible study on Sundays for a few weeks. I can assure you that he is quite capable since he has read the Bible three times, all before he was six years of age, and preaches at his father’s tent revivals.” Miss Ida doesn’t know this kid’s back story, nor do we, but it will soon come to light.
As a class, in childish camaraderie, we are unimpressed and instantly dislike this brat. Will this kid, dressed as a department store dummy, preach to us about sin and saving our little souls? At our young age, the worst thing we could have done is tell a few small lies, steal a cookie, or shoot a chicken with a BB Gun. Hell and Damnation are years away for most of us.
Young Master Stewart steps from behind Miss Ida’s table and slams his ten-pound Bible down on the floor so hard it sounds like a firecracker. A few girls in front are shaken and begin to whimper. The young preacher Stewart raises his hands to the Heavens and launches into a tirade that can only be considered appropriate for adults designated to luncheon with Beelzebub within the hour.
After ten minutes of our first fiery sermon, we are ready to wrap this kid in scotch tape and send him to Africa with the prayer card. Suddenly, he stops and begins to bless our food. He bows his head and, in a reverent whisper, says,
” Dear Lord, these children, wretched little hayseeds that they are, cannot survive on the butter of the Peter Pan and the mush of Welches. They need a substantial amount sustenance so they may be healthy to accept your holy spirit. Starting tomorrow, a glorious feast of grilled sausages wrapped in soft buns, the salad of the potato and the ruby-red fruit of the melon will be their manna from Heaven. Amen.”
Miss Ida is speechless. The little preacher kid has called her food “garbage,” and she has to sit there and take it. The class is now a bit impressed. This kid is good. The sisters, rattled by Young Sweets’ blessing, need time to recover and devise a plan to send this kid back to San Angelo as soon as possible. So they send the class outside to suffer in the heat again.
Miss Rita delivers the ice cream freezer and instructs two larger boys to start churning for the afternoon dessert. Allowing us to have ice cream may be the only kindness these two witches grant us.
Twenty-five minutes into the churning, the ice cream remains a pitiful mush. Now impatient for their treat, the class gathers around the freezer, demanding an explanation. We are kids and know nothing about how these machines work. You add ice, salt, liquid, and chur. That’s all we know.
Young Stewart parts the crowd and approaches the ice cream freezer. He kneels and places both hands on the contraption. In a soft, almost inaudible voice, he says a small prayer and violently shakes the machine a few times. He rises and declares, “There shall be delectable ice cream in five minutes.” He is right. This ice cream might be the best we have tasted in our young lives. Little Master Stewart fixed the ice cream machine. A girl calls it a miracle.
After ice cream, Miss Ida calls the class for Bible study and a story. Her stories are known to last too long, and kids tend to lose interest and fall asleep. Her voice is that of an older man who smokes two packs of Camels daily — raspy and accentuated by the occasional hack.
Bitsy, the smallest and youngest girl in class, is seated at the front table and is in distress. The new kids in the class are unaware that she has an immobilizing speech defect. She stutters, and her vocabulary is limited to a simple yes or no. The little girl is wide-eyed and squirming in her chair. Miss Ida knows her problem, and when Bitsy politely raises her hand to request a bathroom visit, Miss Ida insists that she must stand and ask aloud in front of the class. Of course, Bitsy, immobilized with fear and embarrassment, wets her pants. Miss Ida snickers and calls her a little baby child. We all knew these two sisters were mean, but now we know they are darn right evil.
Master Stewart comes from the rear of the class and stops in front of Bits. He turns and gives the two sisters a “stink-eye” that makes them fall back into their chairs, white with fear. He bends down, takes Bitsy’s head in his tiny hands, and declares,
” Take this affliction from this small child. Purvey upon her the diction of William Shakespeare and the wisdom of Mark Twain. Let her words flow forth like the singing of Doves on the south wind. She will never again stammer or grasp for words and will someday speak to massive gatherings of people who will clamor to hear her message. Amen.”
The class sits in stunned silence. Healing the ice cream machine was a warm-up compared to this. A girl from the back of the room yells, “Thank you, Sweet Baby Jesus.” And there it is: Young Stewart will now be known as Sweet Baby Jesus, or just Sweet Baby for short.
Miss Ida and Miss Rita sit rigidly in their chairs, eyes glazed and staring into nothing. The amount of “stink eye” Stewart, now known as Sweet Baby Jesus, put on them must be compelling. He approaches the two women, lays his small, soft hands on their wrinkled, sweating foreheads, and mumbles a few words. His back is to the class, so we have no idea what is said. The two evil sisters shiver a few times and awaken from their “stink eye” trance. They stand, gather themselves, and tell the class they are going home. Master Stewart will teach for the duration of the Bible school. They depart the church as if in a zombie trance.
Sweet Baby Jesus takes his Bible, sits on the edge of Miss Idas’ desk, smiles, and says, “Now, let’s hear some real Bible stories straight from the source.” It was a beautiful afternoon full of unexpected laughter and acceptance. For once, we kids found that listening to the word of God from another kid made us feel good, sort of like hot oatmeal on Christmas morning.
The following day, the preacher greets us with the news that young Stewart is back in San Angelo and will teach the class for the remainder of Bible school. Of course, we were sad to see our new Sweet Baby Jesus depart our Bible school. Bitsy, in between constant talking, sniffles, and wishes him the best. The class wrote a letter to Sweet Baby, thanking him for his kindness to Bitsy and for putting the evil sisters in their place.
I attended the vacation Bible school for a few more summers, but it wasn’t the same without Sweet Baby, and I attended my last one at eight years old. A few decades later, I read that the Right and Honorable Reverend Stewart Sweet, with assistance from his wife, Bitsy, had established an enormous ministry in Africa and healed everything from Beri-Beri to auto engines. It looks like Sweet Baby Jesus is still doing a great job.
